For the season premiere of 60 Minutes, correspondent Cecilia Vega and a production crew were set to cover tensions between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. They didn’t expect to find themselves in the middle of an international incident, having seen China’s bullying tactics firsthand.
The 60 Minutes crew was scheduled to accompany the Philippine Coast Guard on a routine mission to resupply their ships and stations. Vega and his crew boarded the Cape Engaño, a Philippine Coast Guard vessel, around 8 p.m. and prepared for their journey to Sabina Shoal, an atoll 93 miles west of the Philippine province of Palawan.
The next day, around 4 a.m., the 60 Minutes crew was awakened by a loud bang, followed by an alarm. A Chinese ship had rammed the Cape Engaño, the Filipino crew was informed, telling them to put on life jackets and stay in their cabins.
As 60 Minutes producers Andy Court and Jacqueline Williams assessed the situation, several possible scenarios came to mind.
“Are we going to take on water? Are we going to sink here in the middle of the South China Sea?” Williams recalled. “I see Coast Guardsmen standing by the door, watching it. So we’re wondering, ‘Are the Chinese about to board our ship?’”
On the advice of veteran 60 Minutes cameraman Don Lee, the crew took their passports and devised a plan to secure the footage they had shot on board, in case Chinese sailors boarded the Cape Engaño and tried to take the cameras’ digital memory cards.
“We had to make sure that once we got off the ship, we had that footage and we could show the world what we were seeing,” Williams said.
Back on deck, the 60 Minutes crew saw the three-and-a-half-foot hole in the Cape Engaño’s hull. As dawn broke, they also saw how many Chinese ships were circling the Filipino ship, their bows pointed toward it. During the standoff, the Cape Engaño’s crew was unable to access the internet or cell service, and the Filipinos said it was likely because the Chinese were jamming their communications.
“I’ve been working on this show for a long time,” Court said. “I’ve been in a lot of dangerous, tense situations. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more vulnerable. You’re completely isolated. You’re completely surrounded.”
As the Filipinos attempted to negotiate a solution, they were forced to abandon the first leg of their resupply mission.
The incident is one of several between China and the Philippines in the past two years as tensions have escalated. In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague defined the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a 200-nautical-mile area that includes the Sabina Bank and the area where the Cape Engaño was rammed. China does not recognize the ruling and continues to claim sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion of global goods pass each year.
In recent months, China has rammed Philippine ships, sprayed them with water cannons and blocked their passage through the Philippine EEZ. The incident 60 Minutes witnessed on Cape Engaño signaled a shift in the conflict closer to Philippine shores than ever before.
China has blamed the Philippines for the tensions at sea. Hours after the Cape Engaño was rammed, the Chinese released their own version of events. They claimed in a video that it was the Filipinos who rammed the Chinese Coast Guard vessel. The video prominently featured the faces of the 60 Minutes crew members on the deck, accusing them of being used as part of a Philippine propaganda campaign.
“The idea that the Filipinos couldn’t think of anything better to do at 4 a.m. than to ram a much larger Coast Guard vessel, a vessel almost twice their size, seems a little implausible to me,” said 60 Minutes producer Andy Court.
According to correspondent Cecilia Vega, the 60 Minutes crew was there simply to document what they were witnessing and to show the world what Filipinos go through on a daily basis.
“Bullying is real when you see it up close,” she said. “What you also see, and you have to go there to see it for yourself, is how volatile this situation is.”
The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.
